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Leo Bodnar writes "This eMac upgrade proves that with some effort Apple's entry-level consumer models like eMac can be converted into reasonably serious workhorse system at very reasonable cost. Not for everyone, but some find it useful!"

Sometimes Apple has eMac refurbs. They're typically sold in the $500 - $550 price range. Go the the store at apple.com, then look for the special deals section off on the right hand side.

There are also frequently other refurbished models, and they usually sell for a lot less than new equipment. All refurbs come with a standard one year Apple warranty, but Apple will gladly sell you extended warranty coverage if you want it.

This all goes back to the original Macintosh and Jobs thinking it was a piece of artwork that shouldn't be tampered with. Most people want a computer they can improve, much like people that mod and tune their cars.

Obviously, it's not that big of a deal to most people, or they wouldn't be buying laptops in larger and larger quantities. I expect the old "you can't upgrade a Mac" argument to be history in a couple years.

If that person would have had to pay a professional $100 or $200 to clean up the machine, and it was an older machine, replacing it may have been the most cost-effective option for her. Now if they have friends or relatives willing to do it for free, on the other hand:) . . .

This all goes back to the original Macintosh and Jobs thinking it was a piece of artwork that shouldn't be tampered with. Most people want a computer they can improve, much like people that mod and tune their cars.

I used to sell Macs, and I can tell you this: people who buy eMacs are generally not these sort of people. They might add some extra RAM (which they can do easily), but that's it. If you want an upgradeable machine, buy a G5. eMacs are there for people who want something that will work out

Bah. I voided my eMac warranty with upgrades less than an hour after I bought it! It's a fantastic machine to hack around with. I will give this little bit of advice, though:

Step 1: Know what the fuck you are doing.

Working on an eMac can kill you. I'm not saying that figuratively, I mean that if you touch the wrong parts just the wrong way, you can receive enough of a shock to stop a healthy young heart, and die. So if you don't know the proper way to work around exposed CRT's, make a point of learning before you even consider working on an eMac beyond a simple memory upgrade. Almost everything on the eMac is nestled inside a little Pita Pocket of shielding nestled under the picture tube. So do me a favor, and don't get yourself killed just for the sake of a little extra HD space. Buying a firewire drive is a lot cheaper than funeral services these days.

Doesn't matter. CRTs have some pretty hefty capacitors which store a charge even when unplugged. Hit it with a piece of metal in the right (wrong?) place and it'll ground the charge right through your body.

The parent poster has it right... futzing around inside an open CRT is a good way to end up in a box in the ground.

Not only they have hefty capacitors but also hefty discharge resistors that savvy engineers placed there to prevent brothers on repair floors from sitting on their benches until lunch, waiting for hefty capacitors to lose their hefty charges. As well as keep those brothers away from poking their hefty charge dischargers right into the guts of CRTs and summoning hefty sparks that kill hefty capacitors much sooner than aforementioned engineers have planned.

Disregard my previous post (Was written without thinking, just like my first post!).

I do think it would have been helpful if you had mentioned that the source of the shock you spoke of was from a capacitor. While IANAEE, I do understand what capacitors do, but did not realize that CRTs would have one's with that much stored up. Also in my (weak) defense, I do know people who have attempted to upgrade their PCs/Macs while they plugged in AND powered up!

As the othe two posters mentioned, you are a likely candidate for doing something wrong. The issue is with capacitors. Capacitors are used to increase the voltage available to the CRT. The voltage they build up is many magnitudes higher than what comes through the mains. The catch is even when unplugged they maintain their charge, unless they are either properly discharged, or find themselves the nearest human tinkering with them.

"TVs and monitors may have up to 35 KV on the CRT but the current is low - a couple of milliamps. However, the CRT capacitance can hold a painful charge for a long time. In addition, portions of the circuitry of TVs and monitors - as well as all other devices that plug into the wall socket - are line connected. This is actually more dangerous than the high voltage due to the greater current available - and a few hundred volts can make you just as dead as 35 KV!"

Most people want a computer they can improve, much like people that mod and tune their cars.

I wonder if the percentage of upgraded computers is really that high? I know people think they "want" expandability, but I doubt that many consumers actually take the plunge and upgrade anything. Likewise, I wonder how many large corporations routinely upgrade the hardware on their desktops (rather than replacing them with all new models).

As with cars, I suspect that a small minority actually modify their machines. I'd bet that the vast majority of computers get discarded with the same hardware that they came with. I know that most of the old computers that I see at garage sales are factory stock.

No, it's a myth that people are buying SUV's for the fantasy of off-roading.

People buy SUV's because the CAFE standards have made it nearly impossible for a middle-class family to own a large car. Vehicles with truck frames are exempt from these standards, so the SUV (and to a lesser extent, the mini-van) have replaced both the station wagon and the luxury sedan. Notice that nobody makes station wagons anymore, and Lincoln no longer makes the Town Car.

I think you are misstating the cause and effect here. People don't buy SUVs rather than station wagons because of CAFE. The average consumer is unaware of CAFE. Automakers push SUVs because of CAFE. SUVs are less expensive than a car of similar size because of CAFE.

People do buy SUVs because they like the sense of power, and it is nice to sit up higher and be able to have a clearer picture of the road. The 4WD is nice in a pinch too.

I think you are misstating the cause and effect here... SUVs are less expensive than a car of similar size because of CAFE.

Actually, that was my exact point.

I will agree that the safety of big SUV's is a factor for some people, to a point... except for the fact that the #1 truck in America is the Ford F-150, which had the absolute worst off-set front-side crash test rating of any truck on the market. Worse than a lot of compact cars. The engine compartment fails to absorb much impact, resulting in the

Then I decide I want a new hard drive. But I have the old version of the hard drive controller, and to get full performance out of a new hard drive, I decide to buy a new hard drive controller to plug in.

Then I decide I want a new graphics card. But my motherbord has an AGP x slot, and the card I want uses AGP 4x, so I end up buying a new motherboard.

Personally, my way of upgrading is this: upgrade it as far as it will go, then push it as long as it'll run, and then when it dies, replace it (and sell off working, but unusable parts, and use the other working parts). My Celery box will come back to life as one of the first Pentium M desktops once PowerLeap releases their adaptor for the Pentium M to run on any Socket 478 motherboard. The box I'm typing this on, an old PMMX-233 with 96MB of RAM, has two HDDs - one of which is pulled from my Celery. I don'

There are a good number of computer and electronics stores around here selling various upgrade components -- hard drives, faster CD/DVD drives, video cards, etc. Even Walmart, which requires a high sell-through, has some "internal" upgrades! I'm pretty sure there aren't enough geeks in the area to keep those departments open.

Many computer stores have a service department for computers, so that non-techies can have their upgrades installed (sometimes for free, sometimes not

Generally I find businesses do not upgrade, because it can take a lot of staff time to do. From what I've seen computers get shuffled around the office to people who don't need the latest & greatest, while certain people get brand new computers.

The classic in an office is to see a boss with a top of the range box who uses it for e-mail and the occasional bit of word processing, while their secretary has a much less powerful computer and is doing all the multi-tasking and heavy spreadsheet work. The tri

I don't know if you remember the outcry when Apple started selling Macs with "only" 3 NuBus slots instead of 6. The PC press especially was "outraged".

Funny thing is, when Apple did a little research, they found that the overwhelming majority of users (particularly home users) never added an expansion card. It was extremely rare to find anyone who added more than two.

Yeah. I have this dead rat old box I'd like to upgrade but there aren't any compatible components for it any more. I've been told AGP isn't electrically compatible with the AGP I have on my box and the RAM wouldn't work either (a 66 MHz SDR DIMM system). Can I find a slot1 cpu to max out my mobo today? Nah... upgradability is a false icon... it's just componentization useful for VARs; the end user (old term... correct is 'consumer') will go for the various USB/FW devices...

The main upgrade I'm concerned about is the processor; 800 mhz to 1.33 ghz is a huge leap! Could this be done as easily on other models? I have a 1ghz TiBook (not that I'm willing to experiment on it) but it would be interesting to see what it's "full potential is." But, overall, this upgrade is a sweet way to get a over 1.3 ghz machine for around 1100 USD. That's less than a dollar a mhz.

Sorry, you're gonna be out of luck. All of the titanium powerbooks have the CPU soldiered(sp?) directly to the motherboard. To upgrade, you'd have to completely disassemble the unit and get a new motherboard.

Not cheap or easy. What you want is a machine which has a processor daughtercard (G4 towers, G3 powerbooks). Those make it easy to upgrade the processors.

Well the author of this article did not actually *replace* the CPU, he only *overclocked* it from 800 MHz to 1.33 GHz by changing some traces on the motherboard. It should work on any motherboard that supports more than one type of CPU, without removing the actual chip. This also assumes, however, that the existing chip will run at the increased speed without additional cooling, which may be difficult in a laptop.

Having a cool laptop can sometimes be nicer than having a fast one. i.e. Word will chew up 100% processor time on any compuer I have used, but it works just as well and fast on all of them... thats why I run my laptop with reduced speed and drip LN on the keyboard when it gets too hot.

> Sorry, you're gonna be out of luck. All of the titanium> powerbooks have the CPU soldiered(sp?) directly to the> motherboard.

The same as the eMac processor that was upgraded from 800 to 1333mhz. TiBooks can be overclocked in the same fashion by moving resistors around but I would guess not as much as an eMac. The heat sink in an emac is gigantic.

I upgraded my Emacs to 21.2 a couple years ago and I've never been happier. Having icons in X (even though no one ever uses them) brings a more modern feel, and colours in the terminal is nice to have too. Unicode and multilingual support is now seamless.

By the way, has anyone else noticed how many typos there are on Slashdot these days...

His probably was closer to being slow than yours, since he started with an 800 Mhz processor rather than the 1 Ghz you have. Not a huge difference, but worth pointing out--he squeezed over 500 Mhz extra out of that little thing.

The point was it is the same processor for the 800MHz or 1GHz machines. The speed is limited on the motherboard. This is how processors from the same branch are made. Each is tested, the "good" ones are given higher speed rating, and sold as 1.33GHz, and the "average" are sold as 1GHz, and the "below average" were sold as 800/700MHz chips. Essentially, the chip was sold to be used in a underclocked application.

You can take them to 2GB RAM (mine has 1.5GB), and the 1GHz G4 I clocked up to 1.4, where it's been running stable for 4 days. I don't expect to have any problems with it either, after seeing others run slower G4s at 1.33 so well.

You're correct that they run well right out of the box, though, I'm an interminable tinkerer.

I agree that the 'stock' 1GHz eMac is fine as is, although I can relate to people who chose to overclock their machines in search of more grunt. I dont think of the eMac as a games machine, but I couldnt resist installing a demo of the last version of UT just to see an application work the machine (1GHz, 1GB RAM, stock video card) hard. To my amazement, the demo was quite playable - well done, Apple.

Why not just hold onto it a year, extend AppleCare, and then later when you want to upgrade, sell on eBay for about 80%-90% of the current price, and get a new one.

No question Macs hold their value amazingly well. Also that, if you really look at what you get, you get a pretty good deal for the money. While the components are quite conservatively rated, leaving room for overclocking etc., the price of a more powerful machine is so reasonable that if you paid yourself anything for your time you could have a machine with the performance characteristics you want and a warranty. Also you'd have more time to actually use it.

But all these things are equally true of a car like a Honda Civic; it still doesn't stop people from trying to customize them for higher performance.

Wisdom, in these cases, doesn't consist of deciding to mod or not to mod. It consists of understanding why you want to mod or not mod.

If you have plenty of dough and not much time, the idea that you'd be an idiot to do something like this to save money. However, if you do it for the challenge, or if you are somebody who needs the computer power, doesn't have much money, and has the time it may also make sense.

For anyone interested in accelerating/modifying/etc your Mac, there is a huge repository of information at www.xlr8yourmac.com. In particular, it has searchable database of Mac upgrades rated by the people who installed them, often with useful comments appended by the Mike Breeden, the site's owner. It also has a fairly extensive FAQ (although it's not always easy to find the answer you're looking for) on a dizzying list of mac system & upgrade tweaks, gotchas, and little known issues that might be relevant to someone mod'ing a Mac. Finally, the site has a daily news page on all manner of Mac related topics, but most typically involving updates, tweaks, compatibility info, etc...

The compatibility database is great because it's really the only relatively complete resource for figuring out whether something like an aftermarket CD-RW drive is likely to be compatible with iTunes, etc... (A lot of drives are clones of one another, or really similar, and Apple doesn't list all of those on its site, so having a reference of actual compatibility reports is especially useful.)

Unfortunately the forum isn't currently accepting new members, and it seems like it has been that way for a really long time. : (

NOTE: I'm not affiliated with xlr8yourmac.com in any way, except that I visit the site and find it useful.

If only! You can change the NVRAM settings without even going into OpenFirmware. Imagine that! Overclock your mac with nigh but a simple shell script. It would certainly be something to throw in the face of those constantly-rebooting PC overclockers, that's for sure.

Your argument is based on the assumption that Macs are an inherently inferior platform because they're not as hardware hackable. This simply isn't true. I'll certainly grant that the open architecture of PCs makes them more conducive to hardware hacking, but since my "O/S of choice" is Mac OS X it doesn't really matter.

I very much enjoy doing upgrades and case mods, and I've been doing hardware hacking since before it was called modding (1993). At home I run a mixed networked environment that (at the momen

I can't help but wonder if the iMac model can see a similar performance gain. I own that one...should probably tear it down and see if I can find a similar resistor bank. Anyone able to beat me to it and look?

Possibly, BUT there is one little problem. The iMac is a pain in the arse to get open. You can't tip it on any side, or you'll wreck the screen! How do you get around it? Simple, Apple gives all authorized service providers a foam shell that cradles the bottom and the screen in the perfect position to open it up. How a normal person such as you or myself would get one... that I do not know.